


Echoes over Sand

by SassafrassRex (Serbajean)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU, Blameshifting, Brief though exceptionally loving mention of the other paladins, Gen, Grieving, Hypocrisy from an authority figure (as much as a Lion is an authority figure), Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Keith hates to be alone, Lions not lions, Post-S1, Which for him may be character development, and Lionesses, keith - Freeform, lions with humanoid avatars, vaguely religious/spiritual approach to the lions, very vaguely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 10:40:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7614832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serbajean/pseuds/SassafrassRex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keith is alive. His Lion is... salvageable.<br/>Stranded by themselves, the Red Lion is devastated.<br/>And Keith discovers, to his surprise, that he's no longer built for solitude either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes over Sand

**Author's Note:**

> Not mine. Not mine at all. Not my sandbox, I just visit. No one ever got sued for visiting a sandbox, right?
> 
> Warning: Teeny, tiny deities exhibiting some hallmarks of mental collapse.

 

They were alive. Sand surrounded them and they couldn’t fly. They were alive. Keith was safe, if somewhat battered, though the Red Lion was practically in pieces.

And she was furious.

“I wasn’t wrong!” she raged, flinging her thin arms about. “I didn’t fail.  _You_  did. You weren’t ready and you didn’t know what you were doing. You went in with no plan and you failed and he  _hurt me!_ ”

Her eyes were wild. Back and forth she strode, like her Earthly counterpart might pace in a zoo. She pointed at the well and thoroughly grounded heap of red and silver that was herself. “Do you see? Do you see what he did?”

He watched from his place in the dirt. “I couldn’t let him have the Black Lion.”

She sagged but only for a moment. “But that’s not why you did it. Not the only reason. You did it because you hate him, you did it because you were angry. You are  _still_  angry.”

“Of course-”

“You were angry and you wanted to prove something. Do you forget the mantle you took up? Do you forget what  _paladin_  is? You’re held to a higher standard than your own rage, I need you to be better. Don’t you understand, I can’t keep you, if you aren’t better. You’re supposed to guard me from this.  _I’m_  the mad fool, you’re supposed to-”

She raked her fingers through her tangled hair, yanking out long, red strands as she went.

“We needed to protect the Black, I know. And we could have! We could have done it without this. Provoke and evade, wasn’t it? We’re good at that. He could never have touched us.

“We went in close, to attack him, we should _never_  have gone so close. But you wouldn’t be satisfied unless you killed him and you  _had no chance of ever killing him!”_

Keith couldn’t say anything. He hadn’t, it was true. And his Lion had paid for it.

“We could have avoided this. I’m fast enough, you know I am.” Tears began to drip down her face. Her pacing sped up, every sharp turn sent water flying away to sparkle before darkening the dirt. 

“I didn’t do anything  _wrong._  But he almost killed you. It wasn’t my fault, I _am_ fast enough. I always was, I didn’t fail!”

The last words rose to a shriek as she dropped down to the sand. 

“I didn’t fail.” Her arms wrapped around herself without any shame. “But they’re gone. They’re all gone. He nearly killed you, he nearly killed my paladin.”

Keith knelt to take her grieving face in his hands, but she hardly seemed to notice. The heat of her skin was enough burn.

“I did fail. I did.”

“No, not you. Never you.” In the face of her screaming he could barely manage a whisper.

“He hurt me. You let him.  _I_  let him.”

“You didn’t. Red, I’m sorry.”

She shook her head, hands clawed against her scalp. “I’m fast enough. I’m strong enough. _Why_  wasn’t I strong enough?” She slumped, inconsolable. “He almost killed you, I couldn’t protect you at all.”

Keith sat still and let her shake. “Killed my paladin,” she whispered. “Killed my  _paladin_ ,” because Zarkon had taken from her before. She had lost before, and she’d been alone for so very long. Keith wallowed in his slowly blistering skin and wished that he could offer her more.

“They’re all gone!” The words cracked. Her back bowed forward, she dropped her head to thud on the ground.

_Alone again._

Hands raw, Keith hauled her back up but she paid it no mind. She just sobbed, with thought for neither grace nor dignity, “Our cause is lost, they’re _gone!_ ”

She lamented, she raged, she tore at her hair, “We failed. He could have  _killed_  you and they’re all gone and we’re alone we’re all alone-”

Keith held her close and rocked. And her arms found their way around his back. “They’re all gone.”

Shameless, she begged to have her pride back. And Keith pressed his face to her hair and cried with her.

* * *

After that, she didn’t speak to him. She was angry and her resentment ran cold (and why wouldn’t it? Fire was her joy).

They worked in concert all day long, keeping each other alive, affecting repairs. He helped her heal, and at night she kept him from the elements. But she hadn’t forgiven him.

She relented on the evening of the fifth day. He sat, staring out at the sand as the sun began to set. Stepping up beside him, she gingerly lowered herself down.

He waited to hear what she would offer.

“I never thought you would.” Condemnation.

“I knew you were angry but I never thought you would.” Bewilderment.

“Why couldn’t you be content to evade? Provoke and evade, provoke and evade.” Scorn.

“I should have stopped you. You’re so small. I never expected you to get the better of me. Never though you could, and never thought you’d try.” Betrayal.

“But you were quick. And your will was strong.” Acknowledgement.

She stared downward, and began drawing shapes in the dirt with her fingers. “You surprised the others, too.” And there it was. Disappointment.

“Blue was beside herself. You didn’t hear how she demanded we retreat. And the Black,” she choked, voice catching, “I’ve never heard him sound like that. When he rescued us, he-” tears fell unashamed amidst her etchings, “he was so  _confused_. He was so frightened of Zarkon. He couldn’t make sense of why we would-… of what we even hoped to _accomplish_.”

With a shake of her head, all tone fled her voice. “He hadn’t understood how angry you were. That you had let something so ugly fester inside you.

“You saw Zarkon and you  _changed_. Your whole presence clouded over.”

_This is my chance to destroy the Galra empire. I have to take it._

“What I said to you before. When first we came here…” She huffed. “It. Was unjust. I wanted to kill him, too.”

Keith turned to see her eyes on him, sharp-edged chips of glass.

“You think I don’t understand?” Her face shaped itself into a sneer. Of all the Lions, Red had the greatest gift for spite (perhaps even more so than the Green, whose words could sting like barbs and never missed their mark).

“Tiny,  _tiny_ little cub, you think I don’t know what it is to hate Zarkon? I hated him before you were born. I hated him before your father’s father’s father first opened his eyes. Yes, it lives in me, also.” Her talented scorn turned inward, “It makes me weaker than the others. Makes me unreliable.”

She clasped her hands tightly together. Her eyes closed and her next words were a millennia-old declaration. Though Keith could not know, they were the words she’d recited many thousands of times,

“Hatred is never anything but ugly. There is nothing in the universe that would not be bettered by its absence. Not even our war.”

She turned back to the sand at her feet. “It’s been my weakness for as long as I can remember. I should have recognized it in you, and kept you safe from it. I  _should_  have seen this coming. But I didn’t. I’m a fool. I thought-”

Keith wished he could know what she thought. He hadn’t felt her mind for days. Long, empty days of missing his Lion, even as she worked alongside him.

“I let myself lean on you. I leaned on  _you,_  instead of bearing you up like I was meant to. I didn’t watch you like I should have and it grew and grew and it was bigger than you were and you nearly died.”

_And we are alone._

“It was all I could feel from you. Just anger. For a while, you weren’t even there.  _You_  were just an echo.”

She turned to him. “You have to let go of this. You have to overcome it.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.” She said it quickly. With a helpless sort of finality that forced Keith to clamp down on laughter he knew would trend towards the hysterical. She didn’t know? His beautiful hypocrite of a Lion didn’t know?

“I can’t help.” It still lived in her. “But whatever it takes, do it. It cannot be allowed to control you again. You haven’t the luxury.  _Paladin,_ you are not like every other creature in the universe. I _cannot_ keep you, if you do not master it.”

She continued, her voice cold and toneless, lacking any kind of inflection. “Lock it away somewhere. Recognize it for the hideous thing it is, and lock it away. Burn it out.”   _Fire is joy,_  she had told him. _It must be joy._ “Somehow. Put it from your thoughts, grow accustomed to ignoring it. To indulge it gains you nothing. Expressing it, sharing it, splashing it all over; it will only root into your heart all the deeper. How will you keep it quiet? I don’t know. But somehow, you must.”

Her hand clapped down on the sand, obliterating her designs. Looking over at Keith her eyes were shuttered. “Fool that I was, I never thought you’d do something like this. Pursue your own hate and risk me like you did. Neither did the Black.”

Her voice remained flat, “And neither did your leader.”

Keith looked up. Her edges flickered, where the soul of the Red Lion strained at the construct. 

“Your Shiro wants you to succeed him. Did you know that?” Of course he didn’t. But who better to hear it from than her? “We’ve already discussed it among us. With him and with the Black.”

Keith didn’t understand.

“When Shiro dies, the Black will take you. And,” she clenched her teeth, eyes set like flint, “I will find a new paladin.”

The sudden rocking of his universe left Keith dizzied, “Wh-what?”

She didn’t soften. “When Shiro dies-”

He cut her off, “When he dies? Why ‘when’? What’s wrong with him? Where the hell was I, when we decided to skip right passed ‘if’?”

Red’s face caught between scorn and sympathy. “The Black Paladin is always the first to fall. Always. He is your leader, is he not? His highest honor is to serve you.”

She had said the same of the Black Lion once, when she first told Keith about the rest of the pride. Happier days, when she’d tried to explain her mighty family to the tiny boy she’d just claimed as hers. _His highest honor, his greatest purpose is to serve us. What is he, if we aren’t with him?_

“To outlive his team is to have failed. Failed as a paladin, failed as the  _Black_  Paladin, because you are his  _reason_.” Head tilting, she gave what could almost be a smile. “You are the fire and the water. And the wood and the stone. And he? An unfollowed leader is an empty sky. You are everything, how can he be allowed to fail you?”

His Lion wasn’t a lecturer by trade, she grew frustrated with Keith’s lack of comprehension. “How can you trust him, if he fails what is most important? You can’t. Not in the same way. To call Voltron, that faith must be absolute, you know this. He is allowed to protect you, he may die for you. He has been given  _command_  over you. He is never allowed to fail you.”

She looked back down at the sand. “It has never happened.” She shook her head, definitively. “However things play out, the Black Paladin is the bulwark. Once, lost to betrayal,” and her mouth twisted, “otherwise, to death. But always first.” -

Her edges blurred worse as she thought back. Remembering the Black Lion, stunned and searching. Still calling madly, all alone. Cursing every star in the heavens.

\- “And before the body is cold in the void, perhaps before the battle even ends, the Black Lion takes the most capable of our paladins as his. And then, as soon as we can, we find someone new.”

The finality was like running headlong into a brick wall, Keith’s protests were knocked right out of him.

“That’s the way it is. Shiro knows this. You should know it, too.”

His mouth opened and closed, but managing sound took longer. “What do you-? Why-”

“He wants it to be you. He thinks you the most capable. The bravest, the most resourceful. The most selfless.” She scoffed, “I wonder, was he as shocked as the Black, when they came to rescue us? As disappointed?”

Keith flinched. It seemed worthless, now. At the time, righteous anger singing in him, with one task (one blessedly clear task) to complete, everything had seemed right. He was doing right, making right. He’d felt defiant and good and driven. He’d felt how he might once have imagined a Paladin of Voltron was supposed to feel.

He wondered if Red would forgive him.

He wondered if he’d ever see the other paladins again.

“But whatever they may have thought, they can’t very well rescind their decision now. So, it stands that you are his Second. When Shiro dies, you will step into his place. And I-” Despite her ire, the thought drowned her in such dread that her construct cracked open. And instead of a thin, brittle humanoid, Keith sat beside an enormous red cat that growled furious and pawed at the dirt.

The weakness was brief, passing without mention. Red folded her two five-fingered hands, breathing slowly.

“And I’ll… find someone new.” Her heart railed against that. “Blue has already approached me and she said that maybe…  _maybe_  she could try to trust me with Lance.” 

She marveled at the bottomless love of her sister. She wondered if she’d ever see her again.

“Because Blue. Thinks that… maybe she could work with the princess, Allura. I know I never could. But Blue’s heart is stronger than mine.”

Keith tilted his head. “Lance, though?” She thought she could make it work for Lance?

Red turned to him, with orange eyes shining sadly. “I treasure everything that is precious to you.”

Oh

There wasn’t much he could say to that.

“I do. Truly, I do.” It was why she would help him to protect his Shiro, his Lance, all four of them. She would fight to preserve  _everyone_  he loved, because his loves were hers. Yet, she sat here and she told him, “But that does not change things.

“Shiro will die,” and it did hurt her, but she said it anyway. “Make your peace with it, now. And you will go to Black. I’ll find someone new. We will fight on. And then, when you-… When- When you-”

She couldn’t. She tried, but she couldn’t.

To speak made her quiver like an overstrung bow, “Then whichever paladin you have selected will take your place. And we will do it all again.”

And again.

_And again._

_Alone again._

Heart twisting, Keith wanted to ask why was she saying this? Red was his beautiful Lion. Shiro was his captain. Why would she even talk like this? He couldn’t belong to anyone but Red.

“It may already have happened.” Her melancholy snapped shut, and the air she affected was callous. “I can’t feel any of them. Either because I’m still too weak, or because they’re out of my reach. They could be so far out of reach that I’ll never feel them again.”

She closed her eyes against the yawning void of an eternity alone.

 _Alone._  The better part of ten thousand years, she’d spent all alone, with only her enemies. She didn’t ever want it to happen again. She’d been a fool to think that it wouldn’t.

When she could open her eyes again, she turned to Keith and offered no quarter. “Shiro was hurt. Black told me, before we were separated. He may be dead already. You may already belong to the Black Lion, even now.”

Before his eyes, her face wavered and doubled. He sat beside an ancient force of fire, barely holding itself inside too tiny a frame. Her eyes burned. Brighter, narrower. “Not mine any longer. You may _be_  the Black Paladin, even though you sit here beside me.”

Keith shrank from the heat. “I don’t want that.” His voice was very small indeed.

She just shook her head, fire dimming.

Her dismissal wasn’t cruel. Nothing about her was cruel, not to Keith. But pain washed him anyway. Like a cold stream and longing followed. He wanted to hold Red. He wanted to gather her up in his arms until she loved him again. And he wanted…

He wanted the other paladins. Coran and Allura, he wanted them here. As averse as Keith often was to contact, in that moment, his hands _ached_  just to hold his team. He wanted Hunk wrapped around him. He wanted to scoop Pidge straight up off the ground. He wanted to clutch Lance close and take ease in the knowledge he didn’t have to let go. No one would force him to loosen his grip until Keith was good and ready.

He wanted Shiro—not-dead, not-hurt, very-alive-and-well, not-dead, _never_ -dead Shiro—just to hide him. Keith wanted to be tucked under Shiro’s chin and promised that, for a moment, the universe would hold. For the moment, every-goddamn-thing would just keep.

Just for the moment. So Keith had fucked up. Maybe. Sure, whatever. But everyone was alive. Everyone had made it home and that meant Keith’s fuck-up didn’t have to be the end. It could be fixed. If they were all just together then it could be fixed because Shiro knew what to do.

He knew what to do, even though Keith was lost.

With shaking hands clasped in front of him, Keith fought himself for steadiness. Shiro wasn’t going to die. Not ever. Shiro needed to live and to be the Black Paladin forever, so Keith wouldn’t have to do it. Wouldn’t ever have to be without him or any of them ever again. He wished he were home; he missed their pride just as sharply as Red. Missed them with a longing that tried to swallow him.

But Keith was the Red Paladin, just as fierce and as ruthless as the Lion he rode. He took hold of the longing with both hands. He took the loneliness and the regret. The damned rage that got him this far, that got him here. He took every word he promised he would say, if only he could see them again. He gathered it all together and bundled it up. With savagery honed through years, he clamped it all down, not so it could be hidden for later, but so it could burn for him  _now_. To be tucked just behind his heart, where he could feel it. It would stay quiet, so that he could function. But it would keep him burning, so that when the bad came - when he needed to be strong, needed to be cruel, needed to be bold - he could lean on it then, and not before. He wrapped it all up close to him.

Then he kept still. He kept still, and waited for his breathing to quiet and his heart to slow. Waited until his eyes stopped burning and he could breathe through his nose. Longer, until he could make himself think of something else. He finally became aware of the numbness in his legs. He waited until after the sun finished setting. Keith waited on his calm, and Red stayed right beside him.

He breathed deep. Reached for something profound,

“That’s a dumbass rule.”

\- And fell just short.

Red jerked her head up. “What’s a dumbass rule?”

But he couldn’t back down now, could he? “This idea about the Black Paladin. There’s… literally no way. One-hundred percent success, he _never_ made a mistake? That’s ridiculous.”

“I didn’t say he never made a mistake. All I told you was when he’ll die.” Keith set his jaw, unwilling to flinch for her. “It’s not 100%. If it were 100% success, then all paladins would live long enough to retire. Few have. Sometimes it has happened that all of them died at once.” She said it as though it didn’t still tear her apart. “But if you die, it’s because he  _let_  you.”

“Fucking says who?”

Red puffed up, affronted. “Such is the nature of leadership.”

“Bullshit. You don’t hold people to that. So much of it is just down to luck. Just shitty, lousy luck.”

“Not for you. Nor for our paladins. We don’t settle for the unexceptional or the incompetent.”

“But-… that-… what-the-hell-ever about competency! That’s got nothing to do with it. Which is my _point_ ; that’s not fair.”

“That,” she snapped at him, “is leadership. Acclaimed for the good and blamed for the bad. At any point, did I promise you this would be fair?” 

Her snarl was dangerous, but she couldn’t bluff Keith. He knew she’d never hurt him. “It’s _stupid,_ is what it is. If I was miles away from him and someone just… shot me and there was no way for him to be there-”

“It doesn’t happen. He won’t allow you into such a situation.”

“I’m  _in_  such a situation, right now. And it wasn’t anybody’s fault.”

Well, that shut her up for a second. Good. 

“Or say I just run off on my own.”

“If he is a good leader, you would never dare.”

“Say he’s a perfect leader, but I’m just an asshat and I still run off.”

“Asshats do not become paladins.” There was almost a smile in her voice, before she caught her stride again. “Setting aside your own pointless self-doubt, remember that _I_  chose you. Do you think so little of me?”

Keith winced. Ouch. But also fair point.

“If he is a good leader and his order is correct, you will listen. If he is incorrect, then you will not listen.” She spoke right over Keith’s outraged protest that, of  _course_  it wasn’t so  _simple,_  “He needn’t be perfect. He is allowed to be wrong. But,” and oh, there just always had to be one of those, “he is  _not_  allowed to be so wrong it cannot be corrected. If you die, it falls on him; he is  _not_  allowed to get you killed.”

She quirked an eyebrow, “Think about that maybe, next time you consider getting  _us_  killed. Shiro is your friend, isn’t he?”

Keith’s eyes narrowed but he didn’t rise to the bait.

At least, not that particular bait. “So, that wormhole we got spat out of. If it killed one of the others, then that’s Shiro’s fault?”

She glared. In the dark, her orange eyes were like coals. He wondered if he could make her relent, or if she would just shut him out another five days.

Neither, apparently.

“That wormhole,” she huffed out a breath, “should have killed us. All of us.”

Keith blinked.  _What?_

“When it destabilized, I thought we all would be torn apart, down to our atoms. It nearly did happen, I felt it. But I held us tighter.” Her eyes flashed, “I’ve _always_ been strong enough.”

Keith resolutely ignored the miserable clench of his stomach.

“If I could hold the two of us together, the other Lions could do the same. You and I were worst off. Perhaps the others managed to stay with the ship. Perhaps they are all together, searching for us.”

There was hope in her, however tentative.

“If we are alive… then my fervent prayer is that they are, too.”

The stars were bright in the sky. But he didn’t - Keith chuckled sadly - he didn’t recognize any of these constellations. The beautiful sky twinkled impassive over two castaways; Keith and his Lion sat in the cold, and Keith let her say her prayer.

Neither moved as the wind swirled the sand about them.

“Say lightning were to just stri-”

Red’s bark of laughter cut him off. Then she couldn’t seem stop giggling. Keith stared agape, then he found himself following. They echoed over the sand.

Giggling became sniggering became chuckling became whooping and cackling and roaring.

And if roaring became howling and if howling became weeping. Well it was dark. No one could see.

* * *

On the morning of the fifteenth day, they lifted into the air.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So... apparently, I headcanon the paladins as Jedi... Huh.  
> Fear leads to anger, and all that...
> 
> This is not in fact my main headcanon for the Voltron lions (my main headcanon is that they are sentient robots and they find our carbon-based/Earthling/Altean gender designations to be both comical and adorable. They are "It"s and "I Am"s and "They" and "We")  
> But I was in a "classic pride of celestial god!Lions" type mood for this. And apparently it was a doozy of a mood, because there is more of this universe (wow, is there more! The word vomit was insane this week. I have literally never gone on a writing bender like this one, EVER BEFORE). But it's un-edited and unfinished. Whether it's ever posted remains to be seen. I might try to shine it up and post it (god!Lions, ftw!) You know... someday.  
> But... on the other hand, the dreaded MEDICAL SCHOOL just started back up.  
> So, I may never post another piece ever again.  
> Who knows?
> 
> EDIT: Wonder of wonders, Voltron made me break down and get a [Tumblr,](http://www.sassafrassrex.tumblr.com/) where I will slowly move all this stuff.


End file.
